Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (122 page)

“Hermione?” Harry said as he closed the door behind him. “What’s wrong?”

The door flew open behind Harry not a moment after he closed it, almost hitting Harry as he stepped out of the way, and Padma Patil stepped out of the classroom with a dreadful look of determination upon her face.

“Excuse me, Mr. Potter,” came the awful words, the young girl’s high voice resounding through the corridor like the gloomy bells of doom, “can I ask you for help with something?”

Harry’s eyebrows drew up, and he said, “You can
ask,
of course.”

“Can you tell us how to talk to Salazar Slytherin’s ghost? We want him to tell us where to find bullies, like he tells you.”

There was a little bit of silence in the corridor outside the classroom.

The door opened again, and Su peered out with an inquiring look -

“Well, we’ve got to get to the library,” Harry said quite casually, his face looking relaxed, “would you mind following us?” and began to walk off in the direction that led to the library on odd-numbered days of the month, and Su made like she was going to follow but Harry’s face turned toward her for a moment.

It wasn’t until Harry had rounded a corner that he drew his wand, said in a low precise voice “
Quietus
” and then turned to Padma and said, “An interesting guess, Miss Patil.”

Padma looked rather smug, then; and said, “I
should’ve
figured it out earlier, really. There was that
hiss
in the ghost’s voice, I should’ve thought Parselmouth right away, even before he started talking about Godric Gryffindor.”

Harry’s face didn’t change. “May I ask, Miss Patil, whether you’ve shared this thought with -”

“She said it in front of everyone in S.P.H.E.W.,” Hermione said.

Harry’s eyes had that look they had when he was very rapidly calculating something, and then he said, “Hermione, what’s the chance that -”

“She said it in front of Lavender
and
Tracey.”

“Um,” said Padma. “Should I not’ve done that?”

“Wait here,” growled Mr. Goyle, and went around the corner; and there was the sound of him knocking on Draco Malfoy’s private room.

There was a bit of a queasy feeling in Tracey’s stomach, and she reminded herself again that since Padma had spilled the beans
someone
was bound to tell Draco Malfoy, and it might as well be
her
, and it wasn’t as if she
owed
Harry Potter anything, and a Slytherin had to do what was necessary to achieve her Ambitions.

She’d been collecting Ambitions ever since Professor Quirrell told her off, and so far she’d decided that she wanted to own her own Nimbus 2000 broomstick, become super famous, marry Harry Potter, eat Chocolate Frogs for breakfast every day, and defeat at least
three
Dark Lords just to show Professor Quirrell who was ordinary.

“Mr. Malfoy will see you,” said the low, menacing voice of Mr. Goyle as he returned. “And you’d better hope he doesn’t think you’re wasting his time.” The boy loomed at her briefly, and then stepped aside.

Tracey added having her own servants to her list of Ambitions, and entered.

The Malfoy private bedroom looked just like Daphne’s. She’d been privately hoping for diamond chandeliers or golden frescos on the walls - she’d never have said it in front of Daphne, but the House of Malfoy
was
a step up from Greengrass. But it was just a small bedroom like Daphne’s, and the only difference was that Malfoy’s stuff was decorated in silver snakes instead of emerald plants.

As she stepped through the doorway, Draco Malfoy - who was perfectly groomed even inside his own bedroom - rose up from his desk chair to greet her with a small friendly bow, wearing a charming smile just like she was someone who
mattered,
which made Tracey so flustered that she forgot everything she’d rehearsed inside her head and just blurted out, “I’ve got something to tell you!”

“Yes, Gregory said so,” Draco Malfoy said smoothly. “Please, Miss Davis, sit down.” He gestured to
his own desk chair
, even as he sat down on his bed.

She felt somewhat lightheaded as she carefully sat herself down in Malfoy’s own chair, her fingers unthinkingly fiddling with how her dress robes fell across her knees, trying to make them look as elegant and uncreased as Draco Malfoy’s -

“So, Miss Davis,” said Draco Malfoy. “What did you want to tell me?”

Tracey hesitated, and then when Malfoy’s face started to look a bit impatient, just stammered it all out, everything Padma had said about Salazar Slytherin’s ghost sending Harry Potter to stop bullies and also what Daphne had told her about Hermione Granger being in on it -

Draco Malfoy’s expression didn’t change at all as she spoke, not even in the slightest, and it dawned on Tracey with a sickening lurch in her stomach.

“You don’t
believe
me!” she said.

There was a slight pause.

“Well,” said Draco Malfoy, with a smile that wasn’t quite as charming as his last one, “I
do
believe that’s what Padma said and what Daphne said, so thank you anyway, Miss Davis.” The boy rose from where he’d been sitting on his bed, and Tracey, not even thinking, rose from the chair.

As he was escorting her to the door, just as he was about to turn the knob, it occurred to Tracey that - “You didn’t ask what I wanted for the information,” she said.

Draco Malfoy gave her some kind of look, she didn’t quite know what it was supposed to mean, and he didn’t say anything.

“Well, anyway,” Tracey said, making an on-the-spot change to her previous Plans, “I
don’t
want anything for the information, I was just being friendly.”

A brief look of surprise crossed Draco Malfoy’s face for just an instant before his expression flattened again and he said, “It’s not that easy to become friends with a Malfoy, Miss Davis.”

Tracey smiled, and meant it. “Well, I’ll just go on being friendly, then,” she said, and left the room with a skip in her step, feeling like a real Slytherin for maybe the first time in her life, and having just decided that Draco Malfoy would be one of her husbands too.

After the girl was gone, Gregory came in, shut the door again and said, “Are you alright, Mr. Malfoy?”

Draco said nothing to his servant and friend. His eyes gazed off into nowhere, like he was trying to stare through the wall of his bedroom, through the Hogwarts lake that surrounded the Slytherin dungeons, through Earth’s crust and atmosphere and the interstellar dust of the Milky Way, into the utterly empty and lightless void between galaxies which no wizard and no scientist had ever seen.

“Mr. Malfoy?” Gregory said, starting to sound a little worried.

“I can’t believe I believed every word of that,” said Draco.

Daphne finished her final inch of Transfiguration and looked up across the Slytherin common room, at where Millicent Bulstrode was still working on her own homework. It was time to come to a Decision.

If S.P.H.E.W. did go around trying to stun bullies, the bullies wouldn’t like it, that was certain. And they’d try to do something unpleasant about it, which was also certain. On the other hand, if the bullies got really nasty then Hermione could ask Harry Potter for help, or they could pool their combined Quirrell points and ask the Defense Professor for a favor… No, the thing that Daphne was
really
worried about was if this business got them in bad with Professor Snape. You didn’t want to
ever
end up on the wrong side of Professor Snape.

But since the day she’d challenged Neville to a Most Ancient Duel, she’d noticed people looking at her differently. Even the Slytherins who’d made fun of her were looking at her differently. It was dawning on Daphne that being the daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Greengrass brought in a
lot
more respect if you were a beautiful
heroine
born to a Most Ancient House, and not just a pretty noble girl. It was the difference between having your role played by the lead actress and having your role played by a two-Galleon extra with a screechy laugh.

Fighting bullies might not be the
best
way to become a heroine. But Father had once told her that the trouble with passing up opportunities was that it was habit-forming. If you told yourself you were waiting for a better opportunity next time, why, next time you’d probably tell yourself the same thing. Father had said that most people spent their whole
lives
waiting for an opportunity that was good enough, and then they died. Father had said that while seizing opportunities
would
mean that all sorts of things went wrong, it wasn’t nearly as bad as being a hopeless lump. Father had said that
after
she got into the habit of seizing opportunities,
then
it was time to start being picky about them.

On the other hand, Mother had warned her not to take all of Father’s advice, and said that Daphne wasn’t allowed to ask about Father’s sixth year in Hogwarts until she was at least thirty years old.

But in the end Father
had
gotten Mother to marry him and successfully plotted his way into a Most Ancient House, so there
was
that.

Millicent Bulstrode finished her homework and began putting her things away.

Daphne stood up from her desk, and walked over.

Millicent swung out her legs from the table and stood up, slinging her bookbag over one shoulder, then looked over at where Daphne was approaching, the girl’s expression puzzled.

“Hey, Millicent,” Daphne said as she drew near, making her voice low and excited, “guess what I figured out today?”

“The thing about Salazar Slytherin’s ghost helping Granger?” said Millicent. “I already heard about that -”

“No,” Daphne said in a hushed whisper, “this is even
better.
”

“Really?” Millicent said, in an equally low excited voice. “What is it?”

Daphne looked around conspiratorially. “Come to my room and I’ll tell you.”

They went off toward the stairs that led downward, the private rooms were even lower in the lake than the seventh-year dorms…

Soon enough Daphne was sitting in her comfy desk-chair and Millicent had bounced over to the edge of her bed.

“
Quietus,
” said Daphne, when they were both seated; and then instead of putting her wand away inside her robes, Daphne just let her hand fall naturally down to her side, still holding the wand, just in case.

“All
right!
” said Millicent. “What
is
it?”

“You know what I figured out?” said Daphne. “I figured out that you get the gossip
so
fast, you know about things
before they actually happen
.”

Daphne had half-expected Millicent to turn white and fall over, and she didn’t really, but the girl did flinch pretty hard before she started stammering denials.

“Don’t worry,” said Daphne with her sweetest smile, “I won’t tell anyone else you’re a seer. I mean, we’re friends, right?”

Rianne Felthorne, seventh-year of Slytherin, was working diligently on yet another two-foot essay (she was taking everything except Divination and Muggle Studies and her N.E.W.T. year seemed to consist
entirely
of homework) when her Head of House strode up to the table she was working at and barked “You will come with me, Miss Felthorne!” and walked away even as she frantically began putting away her parchment and book and quill.

When she caught up with Professor Snape, he was waiting just outside the room and gazing at her with half-lidded eyes that seemed far too intense; and before she could ask what this was about he spun without a word and stalked off through the hallways, so that she had to scramble to keep up.

Their walk took them down a flight of stairs, and then another, below what she’d thought was the lowest level of the Slytherin dungeons. And the corridors began to look older in their appearance, the architecture reverting back in time by centuries into roughened stone held together by crude-looking mortar. She began to wonder if Professor Snape was taking her to the
real
dungeons that she’d heard rumors of, the true dungeons of Hogwarts that had been sealed off to all but faculty; and if maybe Professor Snape did terrible things down there to innocent helpless young girls but that was probably just wishful thinking on her part.

They went down another flight of stairs, and came out into a room that was no room at all, but an empty rock cavern with a single door, pierced by many dark openings and lit by a single torch of ancient style that fired as they entered.

Professor Snape took out his wand, then, and began to cast Charm after Charm, she lost track of how many; and when the Potions Master was done he turned back toward her, locked his intense eyes on hers, and said in a level voice unlike his usual drawl, “You will say nothing to anyone of this matter, Miss Felthorne, nothing now or ever. If that is acceptable to you, nod. If not, we will turn and go.”

She nodded, frightened and with a strange hope dawning in her heart (well, not exactly her heart).

“The task I have for you is very simple, Miss Felthorne,” said Professor Snape’s toneless voice, “and your extremely generous pay of fifty Galleons is merely to compensate you for being Memory-Charmed afterward.”

She drew an involuntary breath. Her family might be rich but they had other daughters and kept her on a tight leash and it was certainly a lot of money for
her
.

Then her ears caught up with the words
Memory-Charmed
and for a moment she felt outraged, there was no point if she couldn’t keep the memories, what sort of girl did Professor Snape think she
was?

“You surely know,” said Severus Snape, “of Miss Hermione Granger, the Sunshine General?”

“
What?
” said Rianne Felthorne in sudden horror and disgust. “She’s in her
first year!
Ew!
”

The winter Sun had well set by the time dinner ended, and so it was amid the peaceful light of stars twinkling down from the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall that Hermione left for the Ravenclaw Tower alongside her study partner Harry Potter, who lately seemed to have a
ridiculous
amount of time for studying. She hadn’t the faintest idea of when Harry was doing his actual homework, except that it was getting done, maybe by house elves while he slept.

Nearly every single pair of eyes in the whole Hall lay on them as they passed through the mighty doors of the dining-room, which were more like siege gates of a castle than anything students ought to go through on the way back from supper.

They went out without speaking, and walked until the distant babble of student conversation had faded into silence; and then the two of them went on a little further through the stone corridors before Hermione finally spoke.

“Why’d you do that, Harry?”

“Do what?” said the Boy-Who-Lived in an abstracted tone, as if his mind were quite elsewhere, thinking about vastly more important things.

“I mean, why didn’t you just
tell
them no?”

“Well,” Harry said, as their shoes pattered across the tiles, “I can’t just go around saying ‘no’ every time someone asks me about something I haven’t done. I mean, suppose someone asks me, ‘Harry, did you pull the prank with the invisible paint?’ and I say ‘No’ and then they say ‘Harry, do you know who messed with the Gryffindor Seeker’s broomstick?’ and I say ‘I refuse to answer that question.’ It’s sort of a giveaway.”

“And
that’s
why,” Hermione said carefully, “you told everyone…” She concentrated, rembering the exact words. “That if hypothetically there
was
a conspiracy, you could not confirm or deny that the true master of the conspiracy was Salazar Slytherin’s ghost, and in fact you wouldn’t even be able to admit the conspiracy existed so people ought to stop asking you questions about it.”

“Yep,” said Harry Potter, smiling slightly. “That’ll teach them to take hypothetical scenarios too seriously.”

“And you told
me
not to answer anything -”

“They might not
believe
you, if you deny it,” said Harry. “So it’s better to say nothing, unless you want them to think you’re a liar.”

“But -” Hermione said helplessly. “But - but now people think I’m
doing
things for
Salazar Slytherin!
” The way the Gryffindors had been looking at her - the way the
Slytherins
had been looking at her -

“It goes along with being a hero,” Harry said. “Have you seen what the
Quibbler
says about
me?
”

For a brief second Hermione imagined her parents reading a newspaper article about her, and instead of the story being about her winning a nationwide spelling bee or any of the other ways she’d imagined getting into the papers, the headline said “HERMIONE GRANGER GETS DRACO MALFOY PREGNANT”.

It was enough to make you think twice about the whole heroine business.

Harry’s voice turned a bit more formal. “Speaking of which, Miss Granger, how goes your latest quest?”

“Well,” said Hermione, “unless the ghost of Salazar Slytherin really
does
show up and tell us where to find bullies, I don’t think we’re going to have much luck.” Not that she was sorry about that.

She glanced over at Harry, and saw the boy giving her a peculiarly intense look.

“You know, Hermione,” the boy said quietly, as though to make sure that nobody else in the world heard, “I think you’re right. I think some people get a lot more help than others in becoming heroes. And
I
don’t think that’s fair, either.”

And Harry grabbed at her witch’s robes where they lay over her arm, and hustled her into a side-hall of the corridor they were walking through, her mouth gaping open in surprise even as Harry’s wand came into his hand, they rounded a curve of the side-hall and it was so narrow that it was almost pushing her and Harry into each other, even as Harry pointed to the way they’d come and softly said “
Quietus
”, then a moment later, in the other direction, ”
Quietus
” again.

The boy looked searchingly around them, not just to every side, but even upward toward the ceiling and down toward the floor.

And then Harry stuck a hand in his pouch and said, “Invisibility cloak.”

“
Gleep?
” said Hermione.

Harry was already drawing out folds of shimmering black fabric from the mokeskin device. “Don’t worry,” the boy said with a small grin, “they’re so rare that nobody bothered to make a school rule against them…”

And then Harry held out the dark velvet mesh to her, and said, his voice strangely formal, “I do not give you, but loan you, my cloak, unto Hermione Jean Granger. Protect her well.”

She stared at the shimmering velvet of the cloak, cloth that swallowed all the light that fell on it except what glinted from small strange reflections, fabric so perfectly black it should’ve shown dust or lint or
something
but it didn’t, the longer you looked the more you felt like what you were seeing wasn’t really there at all, but then you blinked again and it was just a black cloak.

“Take it, Hermione.”

Hardly even thinking, Hermione stretched out her hand to grasp the fabric; and then just as her brain woke up and she started to pull her hand back, Harry let go of the cloak and it started to fall and she grabbed at it without thinking. And the instant her fingers touched and held the cloak she felt an intangible jolt run through her like picking up her wand for the first time; and it was like she heard a song being sung, ever so faintly, in the back of her mind.

“That’s one of my quest items, Hermione,” Harry said softly. “It belonged to my father, and it’s not something I can replace, if it’s lost. Don’t loan it to anyone else, don’t show it to anyone, don’t tell anyone it exists… but if you want to borrow it for a while, just come to me and ask.”

Hermione finally tore her eyes loose from the depthless black folds and stared back up at Harry.

“I can’t -”

“You certainly can,” Harry said. “Because there’s nothing even the tiniest bit fair about my finding this gift-wrapped in a box next to my bed one morning, and you… not.” Harry paused thoughtfully. “Unless you
did
get your own invisibility cloak, in which case never mind.”

Then the implications of
invisibility cloak
finally dawned on her, and she pointed a shocked finger at Harry, though they were close enough together that she couldn’t quite straighten her arm properly, and her voice rose with considerable indignation as she said, “So
that’s
how you disappeared from the Potions closet! And the time when -” and then she trailed off, because even
with
an invisibility cloak she still couldn’t see how Harry had…

Harry buffed his fingernails on his robes with artful nonchalance, and said, “Well, you knew there had to be
some
trick to it, right? And now the heroine will mysteriously know where and when to find bullies - just like she listened to the bullies planning it, even though nobody her age could
possibly
have turned herself invisible to spy on them.”

There was a pause and a silence.

“Harry -” she said. “I’m - I’m not sure anymore that fighting bullies is such a good idea.”

Harry’s eyes stayed steady on hers. “Because the other girls might get hurt?”

She nodded, just nodded.

“That’s
their
choice, Hermione, just like it’s yours.
I
decided not to do the obvious stupid thing that everyone does in books, try to keep you safe and protected and helpless, and have you get really angry at me, and push me away while you go off on your own and get into even more trouble, and then heroically pull through it successfully, after which I’d finally have my epiphany and realize that blah blah blah etcetera. I know how that part of my life story goes, so I’m just skipping over it. If I can predict what I’m going to think later, I might as well go ahead and think it now. Anyway, my point is, you shouldn’t smother
your
friends to keep them safe, either. Just tell them up front it’s predictably going to go horribly wrong, and if they still want to be heroines after that, fine.”

It was at times like this that Hermione wondered if she was
ever
going to get used to the way Harry thought. “Harry, I really,” her voice stuck for a second, “really,
really
don’t want them getting hurt! Especially because of something I started!”

“Hermione,” Harry said seriously, “I’m pretty sure you did the right thing. I don’t see what could realistically happen to them that would be
worse
for them, in the long run, than
not trying
.”

“What if they get
badly
hurt?” Hermione said. Her voice felt blocked in her throat; she remembered Captain Ernie saying how Harry had just stared straight into the eyes of a bully as the bully bent his finger back, before Professor Sprout had arrived to save him; and there was another thought that came after that, about Hannah and her delicate hands with the fingernails that she carefully painted in Hufflepuff yellow every morning, but that wasn’t allowed to be imagined. “And then - they’ll never do anything courageous, ever again -”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Harry said steadily. “Even if it all goes mind-bogglingly wrong, I don’t think it works like that inside a human mind. The important thing is believing about yourself that you’re someone who can break your boundaries. Trying and getting hurt can’t possibly be worse for you than being…
stuck
.”

“What if you’re
wrong,
Harry?”

Harry paused for a moment, and then shrugged a little sadly, and said, “What if I’m right?”

Hermione looked back at the black mesh running over her hand. From the inside the cloak felt strangely soft and yet firm against her palm, as if it was trying to give her hand a reassuring hug.

Then she lifted her arm back up, holding the cloak back to Harry.

Harry didn’t move to take it.

“I -” said Hermione. “I mean, thank you, thank you a lot, but I’m still thinking about it, so you can take it back for now. And… Harry, I don’t think it’s right to
spy
on people -”

“Not even on known bullies, to rescue their victims?” Harry said. “
I’ve
never been bullied, but I’ve been through a realistic simulation, and it didn’t feel very pleasant. Have you ever been bullied, Hermione?”

“No,” she said in a quiet voice, and went on holding out Harry’s invisibility cloak to him.

Finally Harry took back his cloak - she felt a small twitch of loss as the inaudible song vanished from the back of her mind - and started to stuff the black material back into his pouch.

As the pouch ate the last of the fabric, Harry turned from her, to break the Quieting Barrier -

“And, um,” Hermione said. “That’s not
the
Cloak of Invisibility, is it? The one we read about in the library on page eighteen of Paula Vieira’s translation of Gottschalk’s
An Illustrated Scroll of Lost Devices
?”

Harry turned his head back, grinning slightly, and said in exactly the same tone of voice he’d used earlier with the other students at dinner, “I cannot confirm or deny that I possess magical artifacts of incredible power.”

When Hermione climbed into bed that night she was still trying to decide. Her life had been simpler at dinnertime, back when there hadn’t
been
any practical way for them to find bullies; and now she had to choose again; not for herself, this time, but for her friends. In her mind’s eye she kept seeing Dumbledore’s lined face and the pain it hadn’t quite hidden, and in her mind’s ears she kept hearing Harry’s voice saying ‘That’s their choice, Hermione, just like it’s yours.’

And her hand kept remembering the sensation of the cloak against her fingers, replaying it over and over in her mind. There was a power to the feeling that compelled her thoughts to return to it, and to the song she’d heard / hadn’t heard in a part of her mind and magic which now lay silent once more.

Harry had spoken to the cloak like it was a
person
, telling it to take good care of her. Harry had said the cloak had belonged to his father, that he couldn’t replace it if it was lost…

But… Harry wouldn’t
really
do that, would he?

Just
hand
her one of the three Deathly Hallows created centuries before Hogwarts?

She could say that she felt flattered, but this went
way
beyond feeling flattered, into making her wonder just what she was to Harry, exactly.

Maybe Harry was the sort of person who went around loaning ancient lost magical artifacts to
anyone
he considered a friend, but -

But when she thought about
which
part of his life Harry had said he’d skipped over, the part where he tried to keep her safe and protected…

Hermione stared up at the ceiling of the Ravenclaw dorm. Somewhere beyond her bed, Mandy and Su were talking. She’d turned up her Quieting Charm to where she couldn’t hear the exact words, but could still hear their faint murmur; there was something comforting about sleeping in a dorm with the other girls. Harry kept his own Quieter turned up all the way, she knew.

She was starting to wonder if maybe Harry actually
did
, well…

You know…

Like
her.

It took Hermione Granger a long time to fall asleep that night.

And when she woke up the next morning there was a small slip of parchment peeking out from under her pillow which said
At half-past ten you will find a bully in the fourth passageway to the left of the hall leaving the Potions classroom - S.

When Hermione entered the Great Hall that morning, her stomach was filled with flying butterflies the size of Hippogriffs; even as she approached the Ravenclaw breakfast table she still hadn’t decided what to
do.

There was an empty place next to Padma, she saw. That would be where to sit down, if she was going to tell Padma and then ask Padma to tell Daphne and Tracey.